Europe's 'first desert' expands in southern Russia

After every summer, Svetlana Bodzhaeva makes the four-hour drive on bumpy unmarked roads through the steppe of Russia's southern republic of Kalmykia to inspect the damage wrought by a changing climate.

Bodzhaeva, an expert on arid land management, picks through the soil and inspects the shrubs planted by her team in an effort to stop the spread of dunes that surround the town of Bergin, populated by a few hundred people, predominately cattle ranchers.

Backed by a spate of scorching hot summer droughts, the sand dunes have in recent years conquered ever more of the area's steppe in what some experts call "Europe's first desert".

Pushed by the winds, they frequently overtake the few dirt roads leading into the village, leaving locals cut off from the outside world.

As Russia prepares for the COP climate summit in Glasgow, its policymakers will have the likes of Bergin in mind, as one of hundreds of cities and towns across the country that are threatened by rising temperatures, from the northern Arctic to the southern agricultural belt.

Due to its northern latitudes, experts say temperatures in Russia are warming at twice the global average, putting many of its people on the front line of the world's battle against climate change.

For the past five years, Bodzhayeva has been helping local herders to plant Calligonum shrubs around the dunes, their roots binding the soil to withstand the advance of the desert.

Nonetheless, she says, the sands in Kalmykia have more than doubled in size over the past two years.

Bodzhayeva says her team has scored some successes, having stopped a dune to the east of the town that had been threatening to envelop it.

"This hotbed of desertification would have totally covered Bergin village in sand in a few years," she says, pointing out the shrubs that now dot the sandy soil.

According to Alexander Kladiev, a veteran desertification expert based in Kalmykia'a capital of Elista, the dunes are driven by soil erosion caused by overgrazing.

The region's sizeable cattle population tramples the fragile soil, leaving it vulnerable to the elements and preventing plants from taking root. Cattle rearing is a traditional mainstay of the local economy.

In recent years, Kladiev says desertification has accelerated because of drier and hotter weather.

"Firstly, the temperature conditions (are changing), this is without a doubt. The amount of precipitation has drastically fallen," he says.

"And if there are rains in the summer then they are short, and the evaporation is very fast."

Locals point to the drought that took place in the summer of 2020 as the worst in decades, with thousands of cattle dropping dead across the steppe due to a lack of food after months without rain.

"It was horrible to look at the cattle, they would look for grass but there wasn't any at all," remembers Ulyumdzhi Mukabenov, a local villager who lost over half of his 25 horses in the drought.

To help the region's herders get through the drought, the regional government announced a state of emergency and secured some 562 million rubles ($7.9 million) of aid from the federal government to buy feed for livestock.

Nikolai Abushinov, the deputy agriculture minister of Kalmykia, said that the region risked losing some 80 percent of its livestock without the aid.

In the end, it lost around a quarter.

When asked about the ministry's strategy on climate change, Abushinov said most of its efforts were now directed at addressing the consequences of climate-related disasters.

Experts say the approach is indicative of that taken by the Russian government as a whole toward climate change, focusing more on mitigating its effects rather than addressing its roots.

Last month, however, the Russian government drafted a more aggressive decarbonization strategy that for the first time set a net zero carbon emissions target by 2060.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Kalmykia, local herders say they are taking more steps to stock up on feed and drive their livestock out to pasture earlier in the morning and later at night, when temperatures are lower.

Many say they are resigned to ever-hotter temperatures in the future that will make their livelihood more difficult.

Zhaksilik Mindigaliyev, 58, a senior herder in charge of some 1,000 sheep near Bergin, said he had no option but to carry on working - while preparing  for the worst.

"The main enemies are sand and the wind and heat," he said, looking out at his herd grazing on the horizon, enveloped in dust clouds.

"There has always been heat, there's no escaping it, but lately it's getting really hot in the summers," he added.